This application claims priority to European Patent Application Serial No. 12382202.5, which was filed May 24, 2012. This priority application is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety into the present application, to the extent that it is not inconsistent with the present application.
Synthetic gas, commonly referred to as syngas, is a gas mixture including varying amounts of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2). In addition, synthetic gas may include other components, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrogen (N2), and residual hydrocarbons. Synthetic gas is combustible and may be utilized, for example, as a fuel gas in gas and steam boiler plants, as an intermediate in generating synthetic natural gas, or for the production of other chemicals, such as methanol.
Synthetic gas may be produced, for example, by the reforming of natural gas or liquid hydrocarbons to produce hydrogen. Another method of producing synthetic gas is by the gasification of coal or biomass material streams. Such biomass material may include forest residues, agricultural residues, nuts, nut shells, wood chips, olive and grape mash, and urban biomass, such as municipal solid waste. The gasification of biomass may produce a crude synthetic gas including impurities, such as ammonia (NH3), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbonyl sulfide (COS), hydrogen chloride (HCl), volatile metals, tars, fines, and char. Such impurities may limit the usefulness of the synthetic gas as a fuel, intermediate, or component in another production process. For example, tars produced in the gasification of biomass may form high viscosity condensate, which when aggregated, may produce plugging or a blockage in production systems utilizing untreated or crude synthetic gas.
Accordingly, it is often desirable to clean or condition the crude synthetic gas to remove at least a portion of the impurities. For example, the impurities may be removed from the crude synthetic gas through the use of a cleaning system including a scrubber. In such a system, crude synthetic gas may be fed into the scrubber and contacted with water and cooled, whereby certain impurities, e.g., tars, condense to insoluble, highly viscous condensate. Typically, the condensate tends to aggregate during the cleaning and conditioning process, thereby plugging the cleaning system and requiring the shutdown of the cleaning system for removal of the blockage.
What is needed, then, is a method of preventing the aggregation of condensate in the cleaning system so that plugging of the cleaning system from an aggregation of condensate does not occur.